Phie Ambo, Michael Madsen, Daniel Nils Roberts, Hanna Haaslahti get ready for IDFA Forum

Denmark is represented at this year’s IDFA Forum with some of the country’s most established filmmakers and producers, involved in innovative creative Nordic partnerships and narratives highlighting human existence and resilience.

Architecture as Invention by Michael Madsen (The Visit, Into Eternity) is both an exploration of world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind ‘s own legacy and creativity, and of architecture itself. The director has set six architectural challenges that the architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and master-planner of New York’s Ground Zero has to tackle over six days. The aim is for Libeskind to imagine his final masterpiece, an unbuilt project resonating all his previous works and his life story. Besides the challenges, the film will include moments with Libeskind touching upon his background as the son of Holocaust survivors and upbringing in Poland.

“My interest is to explore the actual architectural genesis process by challenging a master to create inside the perhaps most sacred space of us humans: our imagination,” said Madsen, who will take the viewers and Libeskind in a unique ‘journey into the void’.

The film in development is being produced by Paloma Productions’ Per Damsgaard Hansen (co-producer of Triangle of Sadness, Club Zero), in co-production with Ove Rishøj Jensen from Sweden’s Auto Images and Arne Birkenstock from Germany’s Fruitmarket. Autlook Film Sales handles sales.

“I believe Architecture of Invention will be an engaging and visually strong feature documentary for an international audience, exploring the creative process of Daniel Libeskind but also some very central questions about being a (creative) human,” said Hansen.

Fire, Water, Earth, Air is a true Nordic creative collaboration between Danish director Phie Ambo, initiator of the project, her counterparts in Norway Janne Lindgren, in Sweden Ewa Cederstram and the Faroe Islands’ Rogvi Rasmussen.
Denmark’s Rikke Tambo Andersen of Tambo Film is producing, with support from the Danish Film Institute, Creative Europe, Film Fyn, CliCNord and the Faroese Ministry of Social Affairs and Culture. Swedish producer Stina Gardell of Mantaray Film and the Faroe Islands' Jón Hammer of Kyk are co-producing.

The four element-focused documentary is a poetic portrait of climate change in the Global North, weaving together four stories of everyday life in small communities in the four nations involved, and scientific findings, meant to trigger change and action among viewers.

Phie Ambo (Good Things Await, Mechanical Love) who is setting the visual style with DoP Troels Rasmussen Jensen, is tackling flooding in Denmark in the ‘Water’ section, Cederstram looks at wildfires in Sweden in ‘Fire’, Lindgren at landslides in Norway with ‘Earth”, and Rasmussen at violent storms in ‘Air’.

“Making a film in this way will of course be more expensive as you have several teams attached. But the production form also brings so many positive elements, creatively as well as on a practical level: local voices, local understanding, the ability to be close to your characters at all times, creative input, creative tales and of course less travel!” said Tambo, who was already looking into new ways of producing greener, when Ambo contacted her with the project.

Meanwhile with Eaten Fish directed by Daniel Nils Roberts, Final Cut for Real co-founder and producer Anne Köhncke is returning to her Norwegian roots and producing her first Norwegian documentary.

The film follows Iranian/Norwegian cartoonist Ali Dorani, known as ‘Eaten Fish’. The latter spent nearly five years in a refugee detention camp on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. The online posting of his artwork helped him obtain international support and eventually a ticket to freedom in Norway.

“Ali used his art to literally free himself, and in this film, we get to follow him as he tries to do the same again: to free himself from the inner prison that the almost five years he spent in the camp on Manus Island have left in him,” Köhncke told us.

“In the film, we meet him as he wrestles with the scars of trauma in his daily life in Norway, but also traveling around exhibiting his work, doing talks at schools, and trying to integrate into Norwegian society.”

“The film will weave together this present day material and Ali's past, which will be told in an inventive way which puts his artistic process at the heart of both the film and his personal journey. Ali and Daniel will be working with a therapist, set designers, carpenters and actors, as Ali guides the construction of life-size theatrical cartoon-style sets based on his drawings, bringing bitter memories to life. As the ”blank canvas” of a vast warehouse fills up with Ali's thoughts, fears and fantasies, these two narrative threads - past and present merge, by turns painfully and humorously, with Ali as our guide,” the produce explains.

The film in advanced stage of development has received backing from the Norwegian Film Institute, Filmkraft Rogaland, Fritt Ord, on top of co-financing from SVT and development support from Arte France. Delivery is set for 2025.

From Finland, Ancestors is the brainchild of media artist, writer/director Hanna Haaslahti (Captured).

Ancestors is a novel immersive cinema format in which digital doubles, modelled after the spectators, take on the roles of the story's actors,” Haaslahti said. “The narrative of Ancestors unfolds as a family drama, with the doubles portraying the parents. The destinies of their descendants in an unknown future bring spectators together as a unified virtual family. This cutting-edge experience is crafted using the Unity game engine and features a visually striking fusion of photorealism and minimalist 3D graphics.”

Fantomatico’s Tuuli Penttinen-Lampisuo is producing, in co-production Poike Production, Germany’s High Road Stories and Canada’s Art et Essai. The project has received co-financing so far from AVEK and Yle. Diversion cinema is handling sales.

Iceland meanwhile is also attending IDFA Forum through Axfilms’ Ólafur Rögnvaldsson, minority co-producer of La Pietà co-directed by Pepe Andreu and Rafa Molés.

A total of 64 projects (including 21 pitch projects) were selected for IDFA’s Forum unspooling November 12-15, parallel to Amsterdam’s major IDFA documentary festival, running until November 19.

The festival's 36^th edition opened Thursday with the world premiere of Olga Chernykh’s A Picture to Remember.